Thursday, January 12, 2012

Equal Rights for Specialty Equipment

[rant mode = on]

I'd like Specialty Equipment to either become a real MEP category (Autodesk's court) or that content creators (whoever you are) stop making MEP content using the Specialty Equipment category. It has not and still IS NOT a "real" category for Revit MEP. Just un-check the Show Categories from All Disciplines option in Visibility/Graphics, not there is it?!?


Elements that use it (Specialty Equipment) are regarded as "lowly" architectural stuff that doesn't deserve to be fully visible. That means your data rack, wire management cabinet, and countless other things are halftone and "transparent" in the RME environment. The first thing us "poor saps" have to do is wrestle with re-assigning them to a category that works so it will show up in our views properly.

It might be better or "easier" for Autodesk to just give it equal status. A rack or cabinet might have teleco stuff or it might have security video servers for data storage. We could argue that it's still "data (devices)" but if it's getting used for security information special things happen. A drawing that has security information gets shared with people much differently (more restrictively) than regular stuff, otherwise what's secure about it? Do we have to copy the cabinet and make one security devices and one data devices (from the same original family)? If it could be Specialty Equipment then we'd just need to filter by something to distinguish them...like Service Type or Usage. That's the easy part, we just need these things to join the party!

[rant mode = off]

2 comments:

Brian Payne said...

So Steve, what is SE? We have had this topic come up with MEP. Especially with Medical equipment that has loads of MEP coordination. Do you know of any building for architects?

Anonymous said...

This is a good topic that the factory should review for upcoming releases. Tel/Data is a currently booming sector for manufacturers providing BIM content and designers starting to leverage Revit in this vertical.

I would advise the factory really evaluate this vertical and address the many issues here. I would love to see the connectors revamped in this vertical also among many other items.